Jagdhaus Nida

... wieder nach Riga, aber dann doch nach Polen.
Das Abenteuer ist noch nicht zu Ende. Angefangen hat es. Sobald man den euphorischen und zugleich beklemmenden Duft von Freiheit in seine Lungen gesogen hat, dringt er in jede noch so kleine Verästelung des Blutkreislaufsystems. Abenteuer schließen keine Lebensgefahr mit ein. Abenteuer verändern einen im Innern. Sie schärfen die Wahrnehmung, rütteln uns aus dem Alltag und lassen uns Kleinigkeiten und beiläufigkeiten schätzen.
Ist also ...

... Oder kennt ihr viele Ostamerikaner, Halbjude mit plonischem Einschlag, Halbitalienermix, abgeschlossenes Philosophiestudium, Autor, Schwerstinteressiert am 30 Jährigen Krieg, der einfach mal so sein Gespartes nimmt und damit durch Osteuropa trampt? Also ich nich. Und wenn ich mal einen treffe, wird er ausgequetscht! Sollte dann auch 3 Tage Zeit haben ;)
Der Typ is crazy! 
Naja, wir haben uns dann die Unterkunft geteilt und zusammen die kurische Nehrung unsicher gemacht.

... town there were no tourists, no people as it was off season. We felt like we had whole town only for us...and the beaches!
There are also interesting places to see nearby, including some of the highest sand dunes in Europe, fisherman's ethnographic museum, gallery-museum of amber, neo-Gothic church (built in 1888).

... dark at night when walking back, but didnt feel unsafe to me. From the hotel to old town takes around 15 minutes on foot. Most of the way is a shopping street. The old town it self is small and not very exciting, but has some nice restaurants and bars. I had dinner somewhere outside in the city centre, which was very cheap. This being a Sunday evening, it was pretty quiet.

... thick for use on the body. I am directed to a pharmacy. The least expensive is $30 for a decent sized tube. Oh well.

I am off to Nida, a beach resort town on the Curonian Spit. Pretty place with a nice beach. It is a 15 minute walk to the beach. The beaches have a much larger crowd than yesterday. This seems more of a vacation place whereas yesterday was the local beach.

Back is still ...

... speaking the language or just a cultural difference. Also, eye contact is virtually non-existent. It gives me a further feeling of separation. But, people in the hostels are pretty cool. Everything from students to retirees (mostly the former). Not many business type people (working or on vacation). In this stay, I met 4 med school students, 2 pre-law, 1 pre-Med, 4 Oracle Software developers from India, a PhD student in political science …

My back has been ...

... park, with forests full of wild boar, elk, and deer, and photogenic sand dunes which stretch as far as the eye can see. Brad became mildly obsessive about spotting elks (and was probably the only foreigner around who hadn't yet seen one on the spit, and STILL left without seeing one). We couldn't leave the spit without having tried its local specialties, which were its smoked fish which was fantastic, and another odd Lithuanian ...

... we had a quick snack and relaxed at a café. The Scissor Sisters' "I don't feel like dancing" was playing. Memories of last summer ... I remembered the first time I saw the video and how I laughed at how cheesy they were intentionally trying to be. The entire island seemed to be pitch black by the time we boarded our bus back to the ferry. Because we couldn't see where we were going, I felt uneasy - could we have gotten on the wrong bus ...

... off to Nida. Along both sides of the whole road was think forest so all you could see were trees and little dolls hanging from the roof of the bus windshield bobbing about. We walked through Nida and along a bit of the coast before cutting into the woods to get to the top of the dunes. It seemed to have warmed right up and layers were actually coming off which this morning seemed like an impossible thought. We carried on through the woods ...

... fish dinner, watched the sunset from this dune that overlooks the town of Nida on one side and the Baltic Sea on the other. Picked up some beer, chilled out down by the docks, watched the sailboats and contemplated what the hell to do with my life. Traveling has seriously expanded the # of job ideas I have dreamt up for myself. Always good to have more options, just harder to choose from.